A Critical Analysis on Transformation of Renewable Energy to Green Chemicals: Opportunities and Challenges

The abundant natural resources and rapidly falling prices to generate and store renewable energy create a remarkable opportunity for a new group of manufacturing industries to emerge. These technology pathways use abundant or waste resources to produce green chemicals and fuels like green hydrogen (H₂), green ammonia (NH₃), and green synthetic hydrocarbons (HCs). Integrating chemical processes and renewable energy can complete the carbon loop and bring substantial decarbonization along with economic opportunities around the globe. An evidence-based and industry-focused critical review of technologies to produce green chemicals and fuels from renewable energy is presented. It also discusses the market size and applications for these emerging industries and presents their development status, benefits, and challenges to commercialization. Green hydrogen production from renewable energy turns out to be the initial and key stage for all these technological advancements and is indispensable for their techno-economic viability. Other environmentally friendly feedstocks, such as nitrogen (from the air) and wastes such as CO₂ (from industrial flue gas), can produce green chemicals. Besides environmental benefits, several other benefits of producing green chemicals from renewable energy are identified. These include but are not limited to (i) accelerating the economy for renewable energy and hydrogen generation, (ii) savings in energy, costs, and natural resources, and (iii) creating millions of jobs. A perspective on opportunities to develop the green chemical industry and assist academia, industry, and policymakers is provided.